Medical device development firm opens office in Media

MEDIA — Whether a handheld suture alternative device or an airbag belt for the elderly, or a robot to teach programming to kindergarteners, Boston Device Development will be working on these projects and more from the Media office it opened about a week ago.

“We are kind of the virtual team that helps these young companies hit their milestones quickly and efficiently,” said Eric Sugalski, company principal. “A lot of time, the technologists will have the attitude, ‘If we build it, they will come.’ They’ll just focus on the actual building. But, in reality, in order to get something so that the market accepts it, you need to be talking to customers and sort of designing with the customers in mind. That’s a big part of what we do — that sort of translation process from the lab to the market.”

Sugalski founded the company in the Massachusetts city five and a half years ago and opened a Malvern office a year ago before moving it to Media.

“This area was really interesting for a couple of reasons,” Sugalski said. “One is that it’s kind of positioned in between the city (and) University City, where we do a lot of our work and also the western suburbs where there’s a lot of medical device companies.”

Advertisement

In addition, he said he appreciated the vibrancy of Media, particularly its pedestrian nature and access to the trains.

Besides, Sugalski said there is a growing cluster of early stage medical device companies in the area, which may be correlated to the educational resources regionally.

“One out of 10 physicians is trained in Philadelphia,” he said. “That’s an enormous amount of human capital here.”

In its time, Boston Device Development has worked on 50 to 75 different products, including building a laparoscopic zip stitch prototype for ZSX Medical, based in the Philadelphia Navy Yard.

The zip stitch is a handheld device that looks like an extended glue gun, which would allow surgeons to clip internal incisions rather than suture them. The gun has a barrel that holds five clips, which would dissipate into water inside the person’s body.

“The problem is when they’re using sutures laparoscopically, it’s a really difficult procedure,” Sugalski said. “You can imagine you have these two long instruments with clasps on them and you need to tie knots with them. It takes a lot of dexterity, it’s very slow. This is intended to speed up this process.”

Boston Device Development also created a model of the device, three times its intended size through its three-dimensional printer. This is part of the refinement process in which they make certain the device is compatible with functional, manufacturer and user requirements, including that they are safe and effective.

The company is also testing a product it is developing for Allentown-based Active Protective. Conceptualized by Temple University surgeon Dr. Robert Buckman and Active Protective CEO Drew Lakatos, this garment is meant to prevent hip fractures.

“This is a belt that has sensors built into it so it detects if somebody is taking a fall,” Sugalski said. “There’s these inflators, where basically a small burst happens and this highly compressed air goes from a little cylinder and expands very, very rapidly into these airbags.”

The firm is also involved in the development of a Kinder Lab Robotics teaching robot, which would encourage younger students to learn about science, technology, engineering and math.

The robot comes with wooden blocks that have commands such as “Turn left” and “Turn right” on them.

“The kids will string together all of these blocks,” Sugalski said. “Then, they’ll take their robot and scan each of the blocks. Then, the robot will do everything they just told it to do. Then, they can change the sequence of blocks.”

These are just a few of the projects Boston Device Development has developed.

“It’s really rewarding,” Sugalski said. “I think that’s why people are so passionate in this industry. You can take an idea at a really early stage and see it all the way through and really see it come to life in the market and know your contributions are a reason it is there.”